


The Fortunate

by AkitoAnemone



Category: Free!
Genre: Future Fic, M/M, Tiny bit of Rinharu, probably going to be a bit angsty
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-15
Updated: 2013-10-28
Packaged: 2017-12-29 11:36:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1004961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AkitoAnemone/pseuds/AkitoAnemone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Haru had been in a relationship with Rin for the past six years, and breaks it off rather abruptly. He's surprised at what's waiting for him when he goes home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this is my first Free! fic, and I'm sorry it's chaptered. I hate chaptered fics. But I'm going to try my best with it, and we'll see how it goes. For now it's from Haru's pov and I may be taking some liberties with his character, so sorry for that. The next chapter will probably be longer. Also, since this is my first fic on Ao3, sorry if the formatting is weird. I'll figure it out.

“Let’s go.”  
“I’m just not sure what you mean,” I said.  
He drummed his fingers on the table. “You know what I’m talking about.”  
“What exactly are you asking me?”  
“I’m asking you to come with me.” He sighed and turned away. “Let’s go to England.”  
“You don’t sound too sure.”  
“I don’t have a choice. You don’t have to come with if you don’t want to, but I’m going either way.” He paused, and his hand was now gripping the table. “It would be easier if you came with.”  
“Easier for you. I don’t think I can move like that again. I just don’t adapt like you do.”  
“You’re fine. You did great this time. I’m sure you can do it again.”  
I was shaking my head. Shaking all over. “No, I don’t think I can. Don’t speak for me. I’ll be fine by myself.”  
“So that’s it? You’re not even going to sleep on it?”  
I took a deep breath and looked him in the eyes. “Just like before, you sprang this on me. You don’t give me a chance to sleep on it. No, I’m staying here. I’m a tree. I need my roots.”  
“And I’m a bird.”  
“Come visit me sometime, will you?”  
“Yeah,” he nodded. “I guess I’ll know where to find you.” Rin tried to smile and knocked his hand on the table before getting up. “I’ll be gone in the morning. I’ll try not to wake you up.”  
“Thanks.”  
And that was that. The end of the longest relationship I’d ever had. The only relationship I’d ever had.  
I let it go.  
What the fuck was wrong with me?  
I didn’t sleep that night, and almost, almost grabbed his wrist when his alarm went off. Almost called after him when he grabbed his bags. I felt him kiss my forehead one more time, watched him take a last look around the room.

It wasn’t happiness, what we had. At least, not for me. I guess Rin must have been happy, but he felt it. The divide that grew between us was too big.  
He was never what I wanted, and he knew it.  
Still, I went with him.  
He was all I had, and it was still too much.

In the morning, I forgot. Waking up from an hour and a half of sleep, I felt around the cold bed, and even called out a little before I remembered.  
So this was loneliness.  
I’d felt it even while I was with him, of course, but Rin was still there. Inside, I was still lonely, but at least I had someone to cling on to.  
I made breakfast by myself, and didn’t eat it, and then went to the pool and didn’t swim, and I realized Rin was wrong. He wouldn’t know where to find me. I had to go home.

We’d been living in South Africa the past seven months, and that was the longest we’d stayed anywhere in the six years I’d been with him. Each time we moved I got physically ill, usually having to stay in bed a week or two.  
And I couldn’t get a job, because I never spoke the language. Couldn’t make friends for the same reason.  
Not that Rin couldn’t support us—he could. He had a lot of money. But I felt useless. A fish taken out of the ocean and put in a fishbowl. I got all of the food I needed, and love, but not enough freedom.  
I grabbed my phone. I didn’t like to make long distance calls, but I couldn’t get home by myself. I scrolled through my contacts, almost smiling when I came to a familiar name, the name of someone I hadn’t talked to in four, five years.  
It rang three times.  
“Haru-chan?”  
“Nagisa, yeah it’s me.”  
“Ah! How are you? Is everything okay? Wow, it’s been so long since we’ve heard from you, we thought you’d forgotten about us.”  
I heard another voice in the background—Rei—asking who it was, and Nagisa covered the receiver a moment to respond.  
“How’s Rin?”  
“Oh, that’s…I need help getting home. I’m not sure how to get a plane ticket.”  
Nagisa picked things up pretty quickly. “Oh, sure, sure, we’ll see what we can do.”  
Rei called back half an hour later, and the next day, I was on a plane back to Japan.

“Haru-chan, you haven’t been eating enough lately, have you? We’ll go back to our place and have a big dinner, okay?”  
I nodded, too tired to do anything else. I could never sleep on planes, and just being back in my home country calmed me down a lot. There was still a long train ride back to Iwatobi, and I fell asleep without a problem.  
Rei was waiting for us at the station, and waved us down the moment we stepped off the train. I was still in a daze, and tuned out pretty much everything they were saying. It was just small talk, anyway. They were considerate enough to not ask anything too sensitive.

Dinner tasted better than anything I’d eaten in the past six years. Mackerel and vegetables and soup that Rei had made. It wasn’t as good as my own, but I was too tired to do anything that offer advice.  
“Wow, Haru-chan, your face just lit up!”  
“He hasn’t had Japanese food in years.”  
I shrugged, trying not to seem too excited. “I missed it.” I suddenly wasn’t tired anymore. “How is everyone?” I asked, and Nagisa grinned, happy that I finally seemed responsive for the first time that evening.  
“Good! Gou-chan and Sei-chan just got married a few weeks ago, actually. I’m surprised Rei didn’t want to come back for the wedding…Gou-chan said he was too busy!”  
“She must not have told him. I’m sure I would have heard about it.”  
“Really? She’d keep that from her own brother?” Nagisa sounded scandalized. “I’m sure she’ll tell him eventually.”  
“So how’s Makoto?” The question rolled off my tongue before I could stop it.  
Instantly, Nagisa and Rei’s faces both dropped. “O-oh, he’s okay. He’s in Tokyo now for work.”  
“What aren’t you telling me?”  
“He got married two years after you left.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Haru goes to see Makoto.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unedited. I'd appreciate any constructive criticism or comments.

“Isn’t that a good thing?” It wasn’t exactly surprising Makoto had gotten married, but I hadn’t expected it to actually happen. Though he hadn’t actually expected me to go with Rin.

Nagisa looked down at his food “His wife died six months ago…he’s been kind of…off since then,” he explained. “She hadn’t liked us much, and since they were in Tokyo anyway, we didn’t see him often.

“We tried to get together with him more often after the funeral, but he’s so busy,” Rei added. “It just didn’t work out.” He started stacking the plates, preparing to take them to the kitchen. “We have his address, though. Why don’t you go see him?”

I shook my head. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea…we haven’t talked since the night before I left.”

 

_“I’ve decided to go with Rin,” I said, and Makoto snapped around to face me. He had been putting away the game controllers._

_“I thought you already told him no.”_

_“I changed my mind. You’re going to Tokyo, and there’s really nothing else for me here.” As soon as I said it, I saw his eyes widen._

_I didn’t understand it then._

_“But why with Rin? Why can’t you go somewhere by yourself? Or to Tokyo with me.”_

_I stared at him. “You never asked me to go with you. Rin’s been pestering me for the past few months.”_

_“That’s not a reason though…You wouldn’t go just because he’s bothering you about it, right?”_

_I had a reason for going, what was it?_

_“I don’t even know what’s going on with you and Rin.”_

_I didn’t know what was going on between us, Makoto._

_I didn’t get it._

_“It will be a good experience for me,” I rationalized. “I’ve never really been out of Iwatobi, much less out of Japan.”_

_He watched me, but didn’t say anything more, except a good bye and good luck when I got up to leave. I hadn’t told him when I was leaving, but it wasn’t hard to assume—I never did give him much warning before I did anything._

_The next day I was on a plane, and a few weeks later Rin was telling me he loved me, and kissing me like there was no one else in the world._

_I kissed back because I still didn’t understand what it meant._

“Not at all?” Nagisa said, slamming his hands on the table.

I sighed. “Nope.”

“Then you have to go see him, Haru-chan!” Nagisa quickly scribbled directions on a piece of paper. “Rei, give Haru-chan some money so he can go!”

Rei was in the middle of getting out the guest futon; it was nearing midnight. “Nagisa, look at the time. He can go tomorrow. Haruka is tired from his trip.”

I was pretty tired, I realized all of a sudden. Reliving my last conversation with my former best friend had drained me even more than the plane ride had, and I didn’t think I could even stand to go to the futon.

Somehow, I must have gotten to it, though, because I woke up under a pile of blankets, and the sun already up.

I hadn’t slept so well in a long time, and took my time sitting up and stretching, just because I had that luxury. Rin always wanted to get up early, go for a run, and come back for a cold shower. I wasn’t so much of a morning person, but I went along with it because that’s all I could do.

“Ah, Haruka’s up,” I heard Rei say as I stepped into the little hallway of their apartment. “Breakfast is ready when you are.”

“Thanks,” I said, looking around. “Bathroom?”

“Over there,” Rei said, pointing. “You can run a bath yourself.”

As much as I wanted to just soak forever—foreign baths weren’t the same—I didn’t want to waste Rei’s time. I didn’t know if he had work to get to or what, so I tried to keep it short.

“Nagisa’s out for the day, so he told me to make you some mackerel,” Rei said, setting a plate in front of me. “He said you’d probably want it.”

“Thanks.” I’d had mackerel overseas, but it wasn’t the same.

Though it wasn’t exactly the same here, either.

Rei looked slightly uncomfortable, just watching me eat. “Are you going to see Makoto right away? Nagisa told me to give you money for the train.”

“I think I’ll go home first.” I ate the last bite of the mackerel and took the plate to the sink. “I should drop my stuff off and air out the house.”

My house was worse than I thought it would be. There was dust everywhere. I thought my parents had said they’d come by to check on it every once in a while, but I hadn’t talked to them after that. I hadn’t even told them I’d come back.

They really didn’t need to know.

I took to work putting away what I had brought back with me, and then started sweeping and cleaning the house, but I was procrastinating. The money Rei had given me was sitting on the table, staring me down.

Why was it so terrifying?

What could Makoto do other than tell me he didn’t want to see me?

I wasn’t really afraid of that, no, I was afraid of what would happen if he acted like normal, like no time had passed by at all, and neither of us had ever left. That would be terrifying.

But if Nagisa and Rei weren’t exaggerating that he had changed, he probably wouldn’t be like that.

I grabbed the money and tugged my shoes on, not bothering to bring anything else. Makoto would have anything I needed. The essentials, a spare change of clothes.

It was after I was already on the train that I realized Rei had forgotten to give me an address.

“Haru-chan? What is it? Did everything go okay?”

“I haven’t gone yet…I’m on the train. Where do I get off?”

Nagisa explained the directions quickly, but they were easy enough that I thought I’d be fine remembering them.

“And good luck!” he said, a bit too enthusiastically. “I hope it all goes well. You two really shouldn’t give up a whole friendship, even if you haven’t seen each other in so long.”

“Not entirely my call,” I said, and hung up. My stop was coming up. I hadn’t felt so nervous in a long time, and was considering just backing out completely. Makoto would have contacted me. He knew how. Maybe  
he really just didn’t want to see me.

I got off the train, shaking my head and made my way back up to ground level. I was overthinking it all.

Makoto’s apartment was fairly easy to find, just a few blocks from the station and next to a Seven Eleven. I walked in like I belonged there, past a couple exiting and took the stairs to the third floor.

I’d hoped I’d have at least a bit of hallway to brace myself, but I was met with the nameplate right away.

Tachibana.

I needed a bath. I needed to jump into a pool and swim until I couldn’t feel my body. I needed to calm down.

Two deep breaths and I knocked on the door. There was silence for longer than I thought was normal, and realized that it was completely possible he wasn’t home. I knocked again.

This time, I heard footsteps coming towards the door, though they sounded too quiet, followed shortly by the lock opening.

The door opened in, but there was no Makoto. Just empty space.

“Are you here for daddy?” I heard, and looked down. A little girl with Makoto-coloured hair stood, looking at me with Makoto’s eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed~ thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Haruka has no idea what's going on with his friend, but it's making him kind of uncomfortable.

I must not have answered quick enough because she spoke again, louder this time. “Are you here for daddy?”

“Tachibana Makoto?

She nodded. “I’ll go get him,” she said, opening the door wider so I could come in. “Wait here, okay?”

I assumed the girl was around four. That made sense. Makoto had always wanted kids, but it was one of those things that had seemed so far off into the future that I didn’t realize it would ever actually happen. I was only gone six years, how much could things have changed?

“He’ll come in a minute. He was asleep.”

“What’s your name?”

“What’s _your_ name?”

I smiled a little. I couldn’t help it. “Haruka. Nanase Haruka.” She really did look just like him, though I could already tell that her personality was different. Her hair was long, and in a messy ponytail. She’d done it herself, I was sure, because Makoto did Ran’s hair so much when they were younger that he’d gotten good at it. Her clothes didn’t match; she had on a blue and red shirt with a green skirt, and purple socks over grey tights. She was either very independent, or Makoto wasn’t paying her enough attention.

I hoped the former, but with what Nagisa had been saying…

No, Makoto wouldn’t do that.

“I haven’t seen you before. I’ve seen Nagisa-chan and Rei-chan, but they haven’t been here in a while,” she said, sitting on the step of the entrance.

“I was…away. I haven’t talked to your daddy in a long time.”

“How long?”

“Six years.”

She was curious, looking at me with big, sparking eyes. My bet was that she didn’t get out much, and I was suddenly very, very angry at Makoto for not giving his daughter his all.

But I didn’t know anything about the situation. It wasn’t for me to judge.

“That’s a long time!” She stood up, her eyes getting even wider.

I nodded, “Yeah, it is. That’s why I came here. Nagisa gave me your address.”

“You know Nagisa-chan?”

“Yeah, we were in the swim club together.”

“I love Nagisa-chan! He brings me candy and plays games with me.” She was closer to me now. I had kneeled down so she could talk to me easier, and she was so close that she could have grabbed my hand.

“Chie-chan, you could at least invite our guest in!” I heard Makoto yell from down the hall. He sounded the same, at least, but my stomach still dropped. His tone was different. He didn’t sound like my Makoto. “Who is it, anyway. Did you-“ There was a pause, and I looked up. He had come around the corner. “Haruka.”

It wasn’t a question. At least he knew who I was. Not that I was expecting him to have forgotten, but, well, anything was possible. I stood up to get a good look at him. “Makoto.”

He was thin. Not sickly thin, but not muscular like he was when I saw him last, and his hair was a bit longer and sticking up in places. It made sense, if he had just gotten up, and his glasses were on, too. He was staring at me, like I was a ghost or something, and Chie stood between us, looking up like we were both crazy. “I’m gonna watch TV,” she announced, making her exit.

Makoto didn’t even notice. “It’s been a while,” I said, finally, because his staring was getting uncomfortable.

He looked like his brain had shut off. “Yeah…it has,” he said, shaking himself out of it. “Why are you here?”

“Nagisa gave me your address.”

“No—I mean, why are you back in Japan?” _Where’s Rin?_ I could see the unasked question in his eyes, and I was glad that I could still understand him even a little bit.

I slipped off my shoes and invited myself into his apartment, sitting on his couch. He followed me blindly. “It wasn’t working, so I came back.”

“I hope you didn’t just leave without telling him you can’t just—what?”

I’d started laughing harder than I had in years, and Makoto started to stare at me again, this time like I’d just grown a second head. In one second he’d gone from being almost a stranger to acting just like he had when we were teenagers, fussing over me. “Nothing. It’s nothing. No, we agreed on it. I didn’t just leave—he had to move again, and I couldn’t keep doing that.”

“Oh.” He looked almost disappointed that I acted like any normal person would and not like I would have years ago.

“It wasn’t that much of a loss.”

“No?”  
I shook my head, and finally Makoto sat down in a char across from the couch. At least he looked a bit more comfortable. “She’s pretty cute. How old is she? Four?” It was uncomfortable talking about what I had with Rin, and I wanted to know more about what Makoto had been up to.

“Huh?”

“Chie-chan.”                    

“Oh, yeah, she is. She looks like me, but she’s definitely got her mom’s personality.”

“Why’d you get married?” I asked, and Makoto’s face instantly changed.

He put his head down, and smiled like he did when he didn’t want to talk. “I thought I was in love. I didn’t know anyone here, and I met her…and I thought I loved her. I thought I’d be happy.”

“You weren’t?”

“I was at first, but…”

I didn’t want to go too far, but I couldn’t help it. “I know you’re not glad she’s gone, but—“

“No, we were thinking about a divorce,” he said, still not looking at me. “I’d rather not talk about it anymore.”

And I saw it then. He was good at hiding it, but really, I was just talking to Makoto’s shell. The real Makoto was long gone, and this shell had gotten pretty good at acting. “How was life with Rin. I mean you left, but…”

                  

_“Haru, let’s go out to dinner tonight.” Rin came in the door looking tired from a long day of training, but still smiling._

_I was sitting on the couch watching some documentary on the ocean. “Why?”_

_“It’s a special day! It’s been three years since we moved out of Japan,” he said, sitting next to me. “So I want to take you out. You don’t get out much, Haru.”_

_His smile when he got like this was nauseating. Random bouts of affection that I didn’t know how to deal with well. He leaned onto my shoulder and kissed my neck._

_“So what do you say?”_

_“Sure.” There was no reason to say no. I couldn’t say I didn’t want to go out because of how he was acting._

_So we went out, and we ate. Rin didn’t push me to talk, and I was happy that he at least was that considerate._

_No, he was considerate all the time. I came second, beside his job, and I didn’t blame him for that. He loved his job, and he loved me, and his job treated him well, and I…_

_“Haru, are you okay? I know this move has been really tough, but this is a nice area, isn’t it?” He hugged me from behind, and he was too warm under the blankets. Even worse when he rubbed against me, just so that I knew what he wanted. It wasn’t like I didn’t want it, too. Rin was so busy, and it had been a while since the last time, but it was just so warm._

_“I’m fine. Tired. In the morning, okay? You go in late tomorrow, right?”_

_I felt him smile into my back. “Yeah.”_

“It wasn’t what I wanted.”

“Did he treat you okay? He can be a little…agressive.”

I shook my head. Rin had nothing to do with any of this—whatever this was—anymore. It was all on me. “Rin was fine. I said already, I just couldn’t handle the moving anymore.”

“Oh,” he said, and I could almost see it—more of the old Makoto, or what was left of him, drain out. “Well that’s good.” It was almost like he was trying to find my mistakes, even hoping that something had gone terribly wrong with me and Rin.

He stared at the ground a while longer. Apparently nothing worth mentioning had happened in the time we hadn’t seen each other. Really, nothing had happened on my end, but Makoto was around family and friends the whole time.

“Daddy,” Chie said, appearing from thin air. “Can we go to the park now? You said we could go today.”

Makoto stared at me like I was the one who had spoken.

“Daddy. Park.”

He jolted like he’d been shocked. “I’m not sure…today isn’t…”

“I’ll take you, Chie-chan.”

“Haru, you don’t have to…”

“You can’t just break a promise like that. If you’re not going to take her, I will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't like this chapter terribly much...the next one will be better! A bit more angsty, though. This isn't going to be too much longer, I don't think.


End file.
